


The Distance Between Stars

by PumpkinButter



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PumpkinButter/pseuds/PumpkinButter
Summary: Jake was the only man that Sadie had ever shared her music with. In this new chapter of her life, she must learn to move on while still keeping him close to her.
Relationships: Jake Adler/Sadie Adler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Distance Between Stars

_...to put your emptiness to melody, your awful heart to song._

_\- Hozier_

It was rare that she left camp, rarer still that she did so alone. She didn’t like the quiet, not anymore. She used to like being on her own, back when being on her own still meant the constant and quiet and assured presence of another person. Now, being alone was something tangible, like an ache, a shadow, something real and something that hurt. Camp was a balm, but not a remedy; it was never empty and never quiet, and so it kept away the hurt, kept the teeth of it away from her throat.

Now, alone in the center of the Heartlands, the plains stretching toward the night sky for miles in every direction, she felt the enormity of the world at her back. She felt as small and singular as one of the stars above. And a memory came to her, as memories always did: unbidden and with staggering force...

_“They look close together, sure,” Jake says, “but actually they’re millions and millions of miles apart.” You lay shoulder to shoulder with him in the grass, his hand entwined with yours._

_“I don’t know,” you say, in a show of skepticism. You don’t doubt him, not for a second. He is smarter than you could ever hope to be. You just love to pretend you’re unsure because you love to hear him try to convince you, words tumbling out in a passion._

_“It’s true! They measured the distance between stars and there’s not even a word for how far away they are. Millions just isn’t enough to quantify it. They only look still and small to us because they’re so far away. Really they’re in constant motion, and bigger than you could even think of. Imagine something so big and so far away, shining bright enough that we can see them here. Not just one something, uncountable somethings.”_

_You smile as you look up at the night sky, bring Jake’s hand up to your lips and kiss his fingers. He had taken these stars, beautiful on their own, and turned them into something even more magnificent, more unknowable, than you could ever dream._

“Uncountable somethings,” she whispered. There was no one around to hear.

She reached into the pocket of her skirt and took out the harmonica. Arthur had found it for her, after she’d mentioned she used to play. It had made her feel guilty. He went through the trouble out of kindness, but she knew that neither he nor anybody else would ever hear her play again. She had only ever played for Jake. Now that he was gone--and the ranch was gone, and their life was gone, and the woman she had been was gone--there were so few things left that belonged to just her and him alone. She would save this one forever.

She sat down in the yellow grass and closed her eyes, fighting that feeling of smallness, of being at the mercy of this huge and cruel and savage world. She could no longer afford to be small, and she would never be at the mercy of anyone, ever again.

_“What are you thinking?” he asks you, a gentle voice in the darkness. He does not ask if something is wrong because he already knows._

_You stare up at the ceiling, the thick bed covers tight around you, listening to the wind scream outside and the shutters rattle. Your body aches from exhaustion; you know his does, too, from the way he grunts in complaint from the simple motion of turning onto his side to face you on the bed. His warm hand touches your hair, soothing your worried brow._

_“Did we make a mistake?” you say, voicing your greatest fear. “Wanting this?”_

_“We knew what we were taking on, Sadie,” he assures you. “We’ve wanted this for a long time.”_

_Since moving to your ranch in the remote northern reaches of the west Grizzley Mountains, nature had fought you like invaders as you struggled to tame your corner of land. Animals and weather and unforeseen disaster had sent you reeling, scraping by for survival instead of setting yourself up for a hard but comfortable living. Your guilt grew as you watched Jake wear himself to the bone each and every day. You had wanted this, and he’d wanted what you wanted. He was strong, and so were you, but you wish now that you had chosen a life where you did not have to be quite so strong, quite so often._

_“Jakey, I’m sorry,” you confess. “I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t know…” Tears spring up, unexpected, and you swipe them away as quickly as you can._

_He cannot see you, but he knows (somehow he always knows), and he leans in and kisses your cheeks, your eyes. “One day,” he whispers, “it will go from impossible to very hard. And then from very hard to hard. And maybe it’ll stay there, or maybe it won’t, but we’re gonna get out ahead of this mess, and we’ll be just fine.”_

_“But you don’t deserve a hard life,” you say._

_“I don’t have a hard life,” he says. “I have you.”_

She raised the harmonica to her lips, then went still. If there was another soul within miles who could somehow see her, she might have looked like she was praying, whispering ardent wishes into her folded hands and hoping someone would hear and answer.

She breathed out, listened to the low, clear note as it pierced the silence and the darkness around her. Muscle memory and habit took over, and she played. Every note was like a brick for a house that she built around herself, a house for them together, a place for them to live for the rest of their time, _her_ time, on earth. No one else would ever see it, nor know to look for it, and no one could knock it down or take it away from her. She could go to it whenever she pleased, and he would always be there, waiting for her.

She was crying by the time the last note trailed off and the silence came back in. Now, though, the silence did not reach her, and the loneliness did not pierce her heart. For the first time in a long time, she felt something solid at her back.

She looked up at the sky again, at all those uncountable somethings that gleamed bright, that showed themselves to her, night after night, despite being so unbelievably far away. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about Sadie as a character a lot lately, and I was really interested in exploring how she might have coped with Jake's death, and built her new life out of the remains of the old one.
> 
> This was written as part of a Red Dead Rodeo challenge on Tumblr.


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